THANK YOU SCIENCE!!!

A *very* personal essay.

I occasionally like to share reflections and experiences from my own life in this space. I am always thankful for the support I find for these essays from the “So What” community. If you are on the fence about joining us, maybe today is the day you hop off. Thank you in advance for considering supporting me.

When my older son was, maybe, 4 months old, my wife left him alone with me for the first time.

It was a big — and stressful — moment for me! I am an only child. I didn’t know much of anything about babies before we had one for ourselves. But, over the first few months of his life, I had figured out the basics — and felt like I could deal with him one-on-one for a few hours (at least).

Everything started just fine. We played. We sang (or I sang to him). I fed him. All good!

After we both ate lunch, I decided to take him outside. I noticed his forehead was red. Like, really red. And swollen. My neighbor was around. I asked her if that was normal and she said it definitely was not.

He seemed to acting ok but I was scared. I didn’t really know what to do other than keep an eye on it. By the time my wife came home, the swelling wasn’t as bad but his skin was still angry and red.

We tried to reverse engineer what had happened. And were totally stumped until I realized that, for lunch, I had eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And then had kissed him on the forehead.

We went to an an allergist. And had him tested. Turns out he was deathly — and I mean that literally — allergic to peanuts. If he ingested a peanut (or even something with traces of peanut in it) he would go into anaphylaxis. Like, not be able to breathe.

Suddenly, we were allergy-kid parents. We got epipens. We started reading labels very, very carefully.

(Sidebar: EpiPens, which provide a jolt of epinephrine that helps open blood vessels and keep someone alive who is having a severe allergic reaction, were for a very long time produced by a company called Mylan. Mylan was, until 2019, run by Heather Bresch, the daughter of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. From 2008 to 2016, the price of EpiPens rose 461 percent while Bresch’s salary as chief executive went up 671 percent, according to NBC News. In 2015, Bresch made $18.9 million in salary. So, yeah. I wrote all about it here.)

When my son was three-ish, we had our first serious episode. My wife, at the time, was the head field hockey coach for a local college. We were in New Jersey — playing in the NCAA tournament. We lost. I was pissed and distracted.

The parents, as they did after every game, organized a tailgate to feed the girls before we got back on the bus for the (long) ride back to DC. My son was bugging the crap out of me. He kept asking for a cookie. One of the parents had made chocolate chip cookies. I gave him one.

About a minute later, I saw him trying to climb up to a nearby water fountain. I went over to him — and his face was bright red and swelling. He soon started to throw up. His breath was ragged and unsteady. (The cookies had peanut butter in them.)

I have never EVER felt worse. Or more scared.

We gave him an EpiPen and immediately took him to an emergency room. On the way he got slightly better but then got worse again. We gave him another EpiPen. When we got to the hospital, we were immediately taken back. He was put on a steroid via IV. He was still so little — and so scared.

We stayed there for four hours. The doctors gave us medicine that he would need to take for the next 2 weeks. (Allergens can stay in the system for as much as 2 weeks after you ingest them!)

My son turned 15 on Saturday. We’ve never had another incident like we did when he was 3. But for the intervening 12 years, I’ve lived — every day — with the fear we might. And, as he’s gotten older, those worries have evolved.

He’s often out with friends and, as anyone who has ever had a teenager before knows, he doesn’t really like to ask about whether peanuts or peanut oil might be in something they serve. It’s embarrassing, Dad!

There’s also this: What if he kissed a girl who, not knowing about his allergy, had eaten something with peanuts in it an hour ago? (Scary, right?)

Thanks to my wife we haven’t raised him as a bubble boy. (The card clearly says “Moops!”). It’s not the first thing we tell people about him. But, his friends know about it — and so do their parents. And every time we eat somewhere we’ve never eaten before, I get nervous. Not panicked like I once was. But worried for sure.

ALL of which brings me to this article from the New York Times on Sunday:

A drug that has been used for decades to treat allergic asthma and hives significantly reduced the risk of life-threatening reactions in children with severe food allergies who were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, cashews, milk and eggs, researchers reported on Sunday.

The drug, Xolair, has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for adults and children over age 1 with food allergies. It is the first treatment that drastically cuts the risk of serious reactions — like anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction that causes the body to go into shock — after accidental exposures to various food allergens…

….For a certain population of food allergy patients, this medication will be life-changing,” said Dr. Robert A. Wood, the paper’s first author and director of the Eudowood Division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

“If you have a severe milk or egg allergy, or something that was not even part of this study — like garlic or mustard — you cannot eat in a restaurant, ever,” Dr. Wood said.

“There is also the fear and anxiety that you walk around with every day,” he added. “I have many patients who are teenagers, and they have never been allowed to eat in a restaurant. The family has never gotten on an airplane because of the fear of the allergy.”

Yes. To every word of that.

Xolair isn’t a perfect solution. It’s taken by injection (needles!) and while it limits the severity of the reaction to the allergen, people with the allergy should still, generally, avoid ingesting what causes it.

But, for me, it’s a MASSIVE relief. Because, assuming we can get him on Xolair, we won’t have to worry constantly about whether he might eat something today that could kill him.

Not living with that cloud of worry is a GAME CHANGER for me — and I hope for him too. (He worries less than me — thankfully.)

Scientific discoveries (and science more broadly) in the medical space have come in for doubt since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2023, just 57% of people said that science had a “mostly positive” effect on society, according to Pew. That’s down from 73% who said the same in 2019.

People like Dr. Anthony Fauci, long considered one of the top doctors in the country, have become political footballs. (Fauci has required 24/7 security since 2020.) Organizations like the CDC and the WHO have been accused of playing politics. Vaccine skepticism has soared.

This is a bad bad bad thing for society. While I am all for a healthy skepticism — and second opinions — I also deeply believe in science and its ability to make our world better.

Because of scientists like Dr. Wood at Hopkins, my son’s life WILL be better. And I won’t spend every night he is out worrying that he might accidentally eat something that could kill him. (Don’t worry, I will find other things to worry about!)

I just wanted to use my platform to say thank you. To all the scientists working to cure everything from food allergies to cancer to ALS. I know the job is often thankless — and has gotten harder in recent years. But this dad can’t say thank you enough for what you do. I am forever grateful.